At tonight’s debate President Obama and Governor Romney will face questions for the last time before the Presidential Elections. Even as they speak and try to sell themselves to the American public, scores of unmanned aerial vehicles will be flying over the skies of northwestern Pakistan, their remote control operators sitting thousands of miles away, and the hundreds of thousands of villagers under their shadow cowering in fear for when they will spit out a missile and wreak destruction over the land that has been their home for centuries.

In the words of the recent report compiled by NYU and Stanford University:

“Drones hover twenty four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan striking homes, vehicles and public spaces their presence terrorizes men, women and children giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities”

Even as the Presidential candidates sparred on October 11, 2012, President Obama had already authorized his 297th drone strike since taking office, it was the deadliest one in 2012, killing 17 people, the second strike in less than twenty four hours in the area. In the aftermath of the strike the Foreign Ministry of Pakistan said the strike was a “clear violation of international law and of Pakistani sovereignty”. As has been the case, for the hundreds of other strikes the objections made by Pakistan, a country against which the United States has not declared war, they were ignored.

Less than a week later, on October 19, 2012 the CIA, that runs the covert drone program, announced it would ask the White House to approve a significant expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones so that it could sustain its lethal campaigns in Pakistan and step up campaigns in Yemen and Somalia.

The US drone program is secretly run by the CIA.

Regardless of whether Americans feel any sympathy for the 500-800 civilians killed from drone strikes or the 176 childrenwho have perished when killing by remote control fails to distinguish between funeral processions and weddings and alleged militants, they should be concerned about the glaring lack of accountability surrounding the drone program.

Specifically, because the drone program is operated and run by the CIA it skirts requiring approval by either the United States Senate or the U.S House of Representatives, in official terms there is no drone program and no war declared against Pakistan, or Yemen or Somalia.

The New York Timeshas reported that President Obama has placed himself at the helm of designating a “secret kill list” that decides without any judicial or legislative input who the drones can target.

In Pakistan, the country where the majority of drone killing is taking place, the funerals and refugees coming from villages plagued by drone attacks are harder to ignore. Drone strikes have displaced hundreds of thousands of innocent people sending them into overcrowded refugee camps and teeming cities. Even more alarming, the anger and outcry at the violations of Pakistani sovereignty have actually driven many to be sympathetic to the militants allegedly targeted by the attacks. Instead of focusing on the ravages and cruelties imposed by militant groups like the Tehreek-e-Taliban in Pakistan, the imperial over reach of the drone program, the ease with which it can target anyone at any time and shoot them from afar, has prevented the very reckoning that would allow Pakistanis to defeat and purge terrorism based on their own impetus.

In June of this year, the UN Special Rapporteur on extra judicial killings Christof Heyn said that “drone strikes threaten 50 years of international law” expressing special concern about the fact that in several cases one strike closely following another actually kills rescuers attempting to aid casualties from the attack. It is time end “the conspiracy of silence” the UN rapporteur said emphasizing that drone attacks were most devastatingly an attack on the system of international law. Amnesty International has also repeatedly condemned drone attacks, what we know about the attacks already demonstrates that they are unlawful and violations of the fundamental human right to not be arbitrarily deprived of life.

In tonight’s debate, as Americans consider which candidate they will elect, it is crucial that they demand answers on drones and the killing being done secretly in their name.

Malala Yousufzai got on the bus on Tuesday morning to go to school. With her, were two of her school friends, also bound for Mingora, the largest town in Pakistan’s Swat District, where their school is located. It was an ill-fated journey. Before the girls could get to school that morning, Tehreek-e-Taliban gunmen accosted the bus.

One of the girls, Shazia Razaman confirmed that they were specifically looking for Malala. She was easy to find, and when they did find her, they shot her in the head. Hours, later as Pakistanis and the world, watched, aghast and stunned at yet another act of inhumane violence, the spokesperson for the Tehreek-e-Taliban, specifically took responsibility for the attack saying:

“She is a Western-minded girl. She always speaks against us. We will target anyone who speaks against the Taliban.”

“

The attack on Malala Yousufzai, the orchestrated and continuing bombings of schools, the murders of Farida Afridi and Ghazala Javed represent the forced eviction of women from the Pakistani public sphere.

”

Malala Yousafzai had been a marked girl since she was only eleven. In 2007, when the Tehreek-e-Taliban overtook the hill district of Swat, a picturesque town that used to attract tourists from around the country, she had kept an Urdu diary for the BBC of life under the Pakistani Taliban. The diary detailed her frustrations with the Taliban’s edict to shut down all girls schools; each word of it conveying the helplessness of a girl eager for an education being thwarted by religious extremism and political forces beyond her control.

Now she lies in a hospital bed fighting for her life. The attack on Malala comes in the footsteps of escalating violence against women and minorities led by the Tehreek-e-Taliban, Pakistan. In recent months, scores of schools have been bombed, including a school in the towns of Mohmand, Bannu, Charsadda and most recently Nowshera.

The attacks are not the only evidence of the Taliban’s orchestrated plan to remove women, especially outspoken and activist women from the public sphere. On July 4, 2012, Farida Afridi a 25-year-old activist who led an organization that informed women about their rights was similarly killed in broad daylight for her work in helping women in her region. She had received many threats in the past, refusing the Taliban’s premise that being a devout and believing Muslim woman required sequestering herself in the private sphere. Two weeks before Farida’s death, the Pakistani singer Ghazala Javed, who was also from Swat and who sang in the native Pashto language of the region was also killed late in the night while traveling with her father in the region.

Together, the attack on Malala Yousufzai, the orchestrated and continuing bombings of schools, the murders of Farida Afridi and Ghazala Javed represent the forced eviction of women from the Pakistani public sphere. While the world pays attention only to the most grisly of the Taliban’s barbaric attacks; Pakistanis are becoming weary of the staple of fear, intimidation and brute violence being forced down their throats by a group whose definition of piety has reduced Islam to only what is visibly anti-Western.

As the world, now watches the slow progress of a young girl who was brave enough to refuse to bow to the sinister threats of the Taliban, hundreds of thousands of schoolgirls in Pakistan watch in thrall as their future and their desires to go to school stand in the balance. Malala’s words can give them strength:

“I have rights. I have the right of education. I have the right to play. I have the right to sing. I have the right to talk. I have the right to go to market. I have the right to speak up.”

Sectarian violence promoted by religious extremists is not new to Pakistan, but the latest series of brutal attacks on the otherwise peaceful Hazara people has reached a breaking point in recent weeks. Despite the fact that nearly 30 people have died in the past two weeks, the Government of Pakistan seems incapable – if not unwilling – to step in to stop this siege of terror.

The situation in the Balochistan province, located in south-west Pakistan has always been complex with a number of different ethnic groups, a seccesionist movement and various Taliban leaders all vying for power. Things have become even worse in the last few years with escalating tensions between the United States and Pakistan over the NATO supply route leading to even more unrest in Quetta, Balochistan’s capital city and bringing an onslaught of tragedy to the Hazara who live there.

For hundreds of years, the Hazara people of Pakistan had lived in the shadows of the low mountains of Quetta. Located on the border between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the city has always been a crossroads of goods and people. Belonging to the minority Shia sect of Islam and easily distinguishable from the other ethnic groups of the region because of their Central Asian features, the Hazara are an easy target.

In particular, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian, militant group have been targeting the Hazara minority in Balochistan in a series of brazen attacks. Last September, religious processions organized by the community were targeted twice. Then came the brutal assault on a bus carrying Shia Hazara pilgrims to Quetta. All the men and boys aboard were taken out of the bus, lined up and shot, as their mothers, wives and sisters watched from inside. The assailants were unafraid, and had insured that the highway was blocked on both ends when they conducted that ambush. Later that evening, two more Hazara men were killed after being dragged out of their cars at a traffic light in Quetta. The total death toll for the day was over thirty dead and scores more injured.

The killing has continued since and has taken on a frenetic pace this past week. Since March 26, 2012, nearly 30 people have died in targeted attacks on the Hazara Shia. Six were shot dead execution style while drinking tea at one of the many roadside stalls in Quetta. The attack on March 29, again involved a hijacked bus whose Hazara passengers, including a woman, were singled out and then summarily murdered with automatic weapons.

Recent days have brought even more attacks, with the hapless members of the community taking to the streets of Quetta, before an apathetic provincial administration and the wrath of terrorist groups that can kill with impunity.

According to a report produced by the community, local authorities in Balochistan have taken only superficial measures or none at all to stop the killings or bring their killers to justice. Public religious edicts issued by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi members and labeling the extermination of Hazara as a religious duty continue to be distributed freely in mosques, via handbill and even text message in Quetta.

The volatile mix of apathy and terror is exacerbated by the general unrest and lawlessness in Baluchistan. Unlike other nationalist forces in the province, the Hazara are patriotic Pakistanis unwilling to support any secessionist causes, which makes their situation even more precarious.

Lacking political connections, resources and unwilling to take on the same tactics of violence and intimidation used by all those around them; the only recourse that the Hazara of Quetta can hope for is that the world who hears of them, does not think they are too small, too unknown and too helpless to be allowed to exist.

Egyptians headed to the polls again this week, even as the brutal crackdown by the ruling military regime continues. Just last week, authorities raided the offices of 17 NGOs, disrupting the work of human rights groups and foreign election monitors.

While the polling seems to have taken place without violent incidents, Egyptians are still reeling from last week’s raids and the deadly security force attacks on peaceful protesters. The continued abuses by the military regime point to a tumultuous transition in the months ahead regardless of the election outcomes.

January’s elections will complete the selection of candidates for Egypt’s 498 member lower house of Parliament. Early returns indicate that the Freedom and Justice Party, the political party of the previously banned Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan), may emerge with a majority.

The inordinate focus of the international media on the possibility of an Islamist government led by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt distracts from the military’s continued oppression nearly a year after protests began in Tahrir Square.

As the international community witnesses these final stages of elections in Egypt it is crucial that focus remains on the central issue which brought hundreds of thousands of Egyptians into the streets this past year: the fact that no polity can be properly governed without a government fairly chosen by its citizens. This central fact, underscores the struggle of hundreds of young Egyptian, like Maikel Nabil Sanad, who continues to be detained solely for expressing their opposition to the hardline tactics of Egypt’s military regime.

In the next month, as further rounds of elections are held for the Upper House of Parliament, pressure must be maintained by the international community on Egyptian military authorities to insure that the democratic future of Egypt is visible and transparent but that it guarantees justice and human rights for all Egyptians.

Co-written by Geoffrey Mock, Chair Middle East Country Group for Amnesty International USA

In late October of this year, hundreds of Yemeni women marched into a main street in Sanaa, the country’s capital. In the middle of streets they laid a black cloth. Then in the middle of the cloth they threw their veils, piles of them, black fabric that had used to cover themselves.

Then they did something unprecedented in public: they set fire to them, marking an end to their seclusion and to their silence.

The night before, on October 25, 2011 twenty people had died protesting in Sanaa and nearby Taiz and the women wanted the world to know that they, like everyone else who had endured President Abdullah Saleh’s 33 year old regime, had had enough.

Women have been front and center in the protests that began in Yemen over ten months ago, visible among the people gathered in change square and relishing the breakdown of segregation among those gathered there.

On the second day of protests, one brave Yemeni woman chose to pitch her tent among men one of thousands of female students, housewives, and professionals who refused to stay home when the future of their nation was being fought in Yemen’s streets. Their iconoclastic enthusiasm was buoyed when one of them Tawakkol Kamran, at 32 became the first Arab woman and the youngest ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

But not everyone rejoiced at their success, some remaining insistent on retaining the old ways. On November 30, 2011, the Yemen Times reported that the Islamist Islah party erected a wooden wall in Change Square to separate men from women. As one protestor noted, the message was clear, you may break other divisions in Yemeni society, but you will not break this one. Many saw it as a visible reaction to the inroads being made by women during the protests; ones which heralded a new era in terms of gender relations.

In the words of Afra Habori, one female protestor who began a Facebook page demanding the dismantling of the wall, Yemeni women have begun the process of change but still have a long way to go.

Despite the erection of the wall, women have continued to maintain a presence in the square, but as the protests continue toward their one year anniversary, the long road ahead and the many obstacles it is likely to pose are becoming more obvious. One of these will be insuring that the removal of old hardships perpetrated by the Saleh regime, the vast silences imposed on political opponents and opposition do not translate into the creation of more walls and more exclusion.

October 1, 2011 was Maikel Nabil Sanad’s birthday and he spent it like he has spent most of the past month, on hunger strike against his imprisonment for speaking out against the Government.

An Egyptian blogger who has been working to expose the abuses of power of the Mubarak regime, Sanad was convicted on charges of publicly insulting the army on Facebook and via his blog. In his post, Sanad called for an end to military conscription which he said should be voluntary instead of mandatory. He also drew attention to the continuing abuses by the military regime highlighting case after case in which protestors were arrested, beaten as military thugs and even tortured.

Sanad’s arrest and sentence are particularly troubling because they expose the superficiality of some of the reforms instituted in the post-Mubarak era. Sanad wrote that “little had changed and in fact things were getting worse”. His brother Mark Sanad told Amnesty International that “over 12,000 people had been referred to military trials” since the January protests began.

While the world’s attention has been focused on high profile cases like the trial of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who is being tried for complicity in the deaths of nearly 840 protestors; the harsh sentence imposed on Nabil Sanad is a troubling development for free speech in Post-Mubarak Egypt.

According to news reports, several bloggers and journalists have been summoned by the military government in the past few months and the offices of Al-Jazeera Mubashir, a local affiliate of Al-Jazeera have been ransacked. It is also reported that the new Egyptian Minister for Information Osama Heikal has warned against media outlets “inciting protests”. On September 8, 2011 the Egyptian Ministry of Information issued a freeze on private satellite television stations saying that legal charges would be initiated against broadcasters who “incited sedition and violence.”

In the meantime, Maikel Nabil Sanad’s condition in prison has continued to deteriorate. On a visit to El Marg prison on September 19th, his family learned that prison authorities had discontinued his heart medication because they said it could not be administered without a doctor’s supervision. His weight is also reported to be plummeting and his family who visited him on his birthday on October 1, 2011 is gravely concerned that he will not be able to survive much longer. The appeal on his sentence which was initially set for October 4, 2011 has now been postponed to October 11, 2011.

As has been pointed out by international human rights organizations and Egypt analysts, Maikel Nabil Sanad’s case represents an effort by the Egyptian military to continue the repressive practices of old and a continued denial of the fundamental freedom of expression that thousands of young Egyptians have so vociferously demanded. In this sense, the capacity of Egyptians and the international community to press for Maikel Nabil Sanad’s release is a test of whether the Post-Mubarak regime can be held accountable to its promises of change.

]]>http://blog.amnestyusa.org/middle-east/the-silencing-of-an-egyptian-revolutionary/feed/2Millions of Slum Dwellers in Cairo Still at Risk after Mubarakhttp://blog.amnestyusa.org/asia/millions-of-slum-dwellers-in-cairo-still-at-risk-after-mubarak/
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/asia/millions-of-slum-dwellers-in-cairo-still-at-risk-after-mubarak/#commentsWed, 24 Aug 2011 15:03:57 +0000http://blog.amnestyusa.org/?p=23374The euphoria of the revolutionary moment is wondrous — drawing out from despondency and delivering from despair, young and old, city dweller and peasant, all uniting in a collective that suddenly realizes its power.

In January, the world watched the Egyptian masses stare down the Mubarak regime, millions of ordinary Egyptians transformed into the extraordinary by their numbers and their valiant spirit. In these last days of August, the world is witnessing another valiant rout, as Libyan rebel fighters’ inch closer and closer to deposing a despot who has ruled them for decades.

In the magic of momentous change, it is difficult to spare a moment for the mundane miseries that persist after the crowds have left the squares, and the slogans hang silent. It is the plight of these people that is highlighted in “We are not dirt”, Amnesty International’s report focusing on slum dwellers in Cairo, the pulsing city that is at the heart of the Arab spring.

The result of two years of research and field work conducted by Amnesty International delegates in the Cairene slums of Manshiyet, Nasser, Estabi Antar, Ezbet Khayrallah, Al Sawah and Ezbet Abu Qarn, the report focuses on forced evictions, unsanitary and dangerous conditions and routine sidelining of slum dwellers in planning and development agendas. Of particular concern is Cairo’s latest development plan Cairo 2050, which requires the elimination of many of the informal settlements with no stipulation as to where the millions living in them will go.

Interviews with slum dwellers, which number approximately 12 million in Greater Cairo, reveal the precarious existence of life in the slums at the margins of revolution. On September 8, 2008 a rockslide from Al Muqattam Hills into Al Duwayqa, an informal settlement killed 119 people and injured 55 others. No action was taken to prevent future such incidents from occurring.

Further dangers are added by institutions and development plans that are being implemented without any concern for either providing alternatives or process to people living these areas for generations. The Cairo 2050 plan foresees the creation of smaller cities with a population of 1 million which would redistribute the outer populations from Cairo and Giza. The plan is problematic in that it does not address the issue of forced evictions where those living in slums would be required to relocate, their belongings and living arrangements bulldozed, their lives and livelihoods summarily extinguished.

The slum report seeks to highlight the human rights violations that accompany poverty. As Egyptians and other parts of the Arab world move toward a new order, attention must be focused on those who are disenfranchised because their voices and their rights are considered simply too poor, too insignificant to be respected. The twelve million living in the slums around Cairo, and the many million more passing their days in similar abjection in other parts of the world must not be left out of the revolutionary moments that are redefining their countries.

A truly egalitarian system that respects human rights would insure that development and progress go and in hand with lifting up those languishing in poverty and insuring that their voices are a part of a new Egypt, a new Arab world. The young people at the helm of the change in Egypt, in Libya and Syria must insure that the new order that is ushered in breaks down not only the oppression of dictatorship but also the crushing silence imposed on the poor.

Busy streets usually teeming with crowds remained eerily deserted and all petrol pumps were closed preventing city residents from leaving their homes. Pakistani television reported that many with small children or elderly relatives are suffering owing to the inability to obtain food and supplies.

Uncertainty and tensions in the city have been exacerbated by the “shoot on sight” orders given to security personnel patrolling city streets. The order leaves Karachi’s citizens vulnerable not only to the ethnic violence ravaging the city but also to excesses by security forces posted around the city who can now kill with impunity.

In the words of Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International Director for Asia and Pacific “Given the Pakistani army’s record of human rights violations and impunity, such license given to the security forces, in a volatile situation, can only be a recipe for disaster, encouraging lawlessness, further violence and killings.”

The violence in Karachi also marks the growing urbanization and ethnicization of the War on Terror whose impact now seems to have spread from rural Pakistan into its urban and densely populated heart. In June 2010, Amnesty International released a report “Eyes on Pakistan” on the internal displacement of millions of Pakistanis, primarily ethnic Pashtuns, who were forced to flee their homes owing to drone attacks and operations by Pakistani security forces.

The report detailed how many of these refugees were headed to Karachi in the country’s south, a city already crumbling under the weight of poor infrastructure and limited opportunities. The current violence in the city reflects tensions created by these very demographic changes whose calamitous consequences have been largely ignored by policy makers in the United States in their push for a continuation of drone warfare in the region.

The city’s vast informal settlements, controlled by land and transport mafias, providing safe havens for a variety of non-state groups interested in extending their reach beyond the tribal hinterlands of the tribal northwest. Caught in the middle, Karachi’s terrified residents watching helplessly as the War on Terror moves into their neighborhood bringing with it endless calamity and unceasing violence.

Following the incident, an Anti-Terrorism Court had sentenced six of the accused men to death. This sentence was overturned by the Lahore High Court which acquitted five of the accused and commuted the sentence of the sixth to life imprisonment.

Now the Supreme Court Pakistan’s highest legal authority has affirmed the judgment of the Lahore High Court and acquitted all but one of the accused. In an astounding decision, the Court argues that the accused enjoy a “triple presumption of innocence” without ever defining the term or explaining the burden of proof it entails.

In other portions of the decision, the Court an appellate body questions Mukhtar Mai’s ability to identify her rapists given that the incident occurred after dark. The Court also refused to attach accomplice liability to other members of the council or any members of the crowd of 200/250 people which the Court’s own record admits were present when the incident took place. The decision cites lack of evidence as the reason for upholding the acquittals.

In television interviews Mukhtar Mai expressed outrage at the Court’s decision and said she had fears of retaliation from her newly freed rapists. Human rights groups in Pakistan and around the world have expressed their shock and outrage at the decision. Ignoring the reality that the local community in Mukhtar’s village supported the village council’s decision and that rape kits are almost never on rape victims, the Supreme Court has chosen to re-victimize Mukhtar by asserting the incorrect filing of the initial police report and lack of DNA evidence as some of the reasons for acquittal.

Mukhtar Mai’s case represents the double conundrum facing Pakistani victims of rape and sexual assault. Not only must they contend with the increasing power of fundamentalist groups that wish to use religion to eliminate women from the public sphere, but also institutional patriarchy that fails to acknowledge the obstacles faced by rape victims in evidence collection and crime reporting. As noted by human rights groups in Pakistan and elsewhere, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has not shied away from ordering investigations etc in other cases but has refused to do so in this instance.

Other recent setbacks for rape survivors in Pakistan include a challenge issued by the Federal Shariat Court on December 22, 2010. The Shariat Court deemed unconstitutional the provisions of the Women’s Protection Act of 2006 which amended clauses relating to rape.

The decision of the Federal Shariat Court if implemented would once again create a situation wherereports made by rape victims can be used as confessions to prosecute them for fornication and/or adultery under the provisions of the Zina and Hudood Ordinance of and require them to provide four witnesses to the act to enable prosecution. The Federal Shariat Court refused to consider the arguments of Muslim scholars as well as Pakistan’s own Council of Islamic Ideology that has criticized the law as poorly constructed and lacking theological validity. On Sunday April 24, 2011 Mukhtar Mai and her legal team announced that they will be pursuing review of the case and that she will continue her efforts to educate and empower women.

To take action, please send messages to Pakistani authorities asking them to review Mukhtar Mai’s case.

Bahraini anti-government look at spent gas canisters, stun grenades, rubber bullets all piled up in Pearl Square, the epicentre of the anti government movement, in Manama on March 14, 2011 (JAMES LAWLER DUGGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

As protests in Bahrain continue, we’re seeing increased brutality against protesters. Amnesty International has documented several cases of police brutality in which protesters were fired upon or beaten up and medical personnel prevented from providing aid.

Recent reports have also emerged of brutal attacks on Asian migrant workers wrongly believed to be members of security forces. According to reports from the Bahraini Human Rights Watch Society and Migrant Workers Protection Society more than forty workers have been attacked by protesters. The newspaper Gulf News reported the deaths of four migrant workers since the protests began on February 14, 2011.

The increase in violence reveals how sectarian tensions in Bahrain are being exploited by the ruling family to refuse rights to both migrant workers and protesters. The use of migrant workers from Sunni countries to brutalize protesters is designed to deflect attention away from real political grievances by the largely Shia protesters. It also takes attention away from the dismal condition of most Bahraini migrant workers that work long hours and have few or no rights to organize or demand fair employment or housing practices.

Bahraini authorities are pitting one group of victims against another while the real culprits remain untouched and continue to wield power.

Amnesty International has been reporting on the mistreatment of protesters since demonstrations began over a month ago. However, despite worldwide criticism, Bahraini authorities seem unwilling to back down on their violent crackdown on those peacefully demanding their political rights.